It’s not just about keywords anymore. Smart marketers and SEO copywriters have known for some time that focusing on keywords alone is a fool’s errand. There’s just as much, if not more, traffic to be gained from social media if you create content around hot topics and key customer problems.

But how can you identify popular topics that are going to get shared, as well as feed the search engine spiders? All it requires is going through a few extra steps than keyword research alone.

How to find popular topics in your niche

Keyword suggestion tools are great for identifying which specific words to mention. But if you want to know what’s going to be popular with living, breathing people, you need to find out which articles have been shared the most or attracted the most links in the past.

There are a few tools you can use:

Topsy.com – Allows you to search for the most Tweeted articles of all time in your niche.

Moz Opensite Explorer – Pop in a popular website in your industry then click on ‘Top Pages’ to find articles which attracted the most links.

Google – Find the most popular articles in Google’s search results and then use your backlink checking tool of choice to find out how many links these articles got and where from.

Once you’ve identified some red hot topics in your niche the next stage is to not merely replicate them but to go one step beyond. This is a strategy popularised by Brian Dean at Backlinko, which he calls ‘The Skyscraper Technique’ and increased his own traffic 110% in just 14 days.

If you want to standout in your industry, there’s no point creating content, or a skyscraper, that’s offering the same level of information as what’s already out there. You have to add another few floors on top, and improve on it, if you want your content to be worthy of people’s links, shares and traffic.

How can I add extra floors to my SEO content?

There are a few ways of improving on the popular content that’s already out there:

Go into more detail – If a popular post shares 10 ways to beat procrastination, yours needs to offer 20 ways.

Better design – A few custom designed vector graphics and diagrams can go a long way to making posts look more interesting, easier to consume and of higher value.

Bring it up to date – If the original post is a few months or years old, consider what’s happened in your industry that can make the topic more up to date and relevant to today’s reader.

Combining all three of these tactics is a surefire way of hitting a home run with your SEO skyscraper content and creating something remarkable that’s going to get some traction for your website in even the most competitive niches. An extra step you can take is to contact website owners and people in social media who shared popular posts previously, and suggest they take a look at yours.

So take your seo copywriting strategy beyond chasing keywords. Start building content skyscrapers on hot topics that are already proven to be popular and watch your search engine ranking and website traffic rise.

P.S. I’ve linked to it already, but you really should check out Brian’s post for a more thorough explanation of this strategy.